Tesla Coil Build Thread

[Speedy78]

I want strikes to the ground from the breakout but im still messing with tunning. Melted a rubber insulator running it today on the primary side. Lol.

 

[Seoul_lasers]

I want strikes to the ground from the breakout but im still messing with tunning. Melted a rubber insulator running it today on the primary side. Lol.

Sounds like your primary is overheating...
Are you able to adjust the amount of windings?
Do you have the kit from Eastern High Voltage research?

Not sure what TC you've got here.

 

[Speedy78]

Its a oneTesla with a custom primary. I can tap it anywhere up to 5.25 turns and below.

 

[Sigurthr]

Yep, he's hitting the ACohms I2R loss wall because he's using a relatively thin wire primary. The OneTeslas popping up seem to be quite problematic out of the box. Speedy had to do a lot of tweaking to get it to run stably.

Anyway;

Fiddy and I proudly present Sig's Universal SSTC Logic Controller!

Just waiting on Fiddy to send over the final files so I can send it off to OSHpark. Assuming the first run of boards checks out fine after I put it through thorough testing there will be ONE board for sale initially. Fiddy gets one of the initial three for his troubles, and the test board is mine. If there's significant interest I'll order up more. The schematic will be posted soon(tm).

 

[Speedy78]

Can I claim that one?

 

[Sigurthr]

I don't see why I can't give ya first crack at it =). Price will have to be determined when I get the quote from OSHpark, but it will be rather cheap, as far as SSTC boards go, that's for damned sure. I haven't priced out a single order BOM yet, but my guesstimate is ~$25 for all parts. That's next on my To Do: list, single order BOMs on digikey. I have 95% of all components on hand for my test build. My aim is that in the end the total cost beats EVR's SSTC1.0 Board Kit.

 

[Speedy78]

That would be sweet! Let me know when all is said and done and you have a price tag for me along with the list of components to buy.

 

[The Lightning Stalker]

Come on, two minutes?

I have everything on hand except for the UCC driver chips. Maybe I'll just do one up point-to-point. Or not,
so busy right now

 

[Sigurthr]

No worries man, as I said, if others show interest (basically, if I can get at least 2 ppl who want one per batch) there won't be a short supply.

The actual BOM is finished, I just haven't added up the total cost of ordering one order of it yet.

Reminder: the special caps for C6 and C7 are NOT available at digikey, but are available at mouser. Substitute parts at your own risk.

 

[Speedy78]

Wont be a big deal to order from two locations. How is the list set up? By part number? Every kit I have ever done just comes with the components. Never sourced them myself.

 

[The Lightning Stalker]

They look like PP, so I probably have those as well. Guess we'll find out when you drop the
BOMb/schematic.

 

[Sigurthr]

I have all the exact part numbers on the BOM, no guessing involved.

Can we not attach files to posts anymore? Both options are grayed out for me and do nothing when clicked.

 

[The Lightning Stalker]

I don't think so. I always just use pastebin anyway.

 

[Seoul_lasers]

Its a oneTesla with a custom primary. I can tap it anywhere up to 5.25 turns and below.

So the thin primary is heating up due to the resistance. Ah..
I had a look at their website, and sure enough the primary looks like house wiring.

Replace this with refrigerator tubing? Idea? Can it be done, or would this throw the driver board into chaos?

 

[Speedy78]

If you go back to page 20 you can see the new helical bare copper primary I made. Its about twice as much copper than the wire supplied with the kit. It gets warm after a run. The rubber that melted was on my tap. It was the rubber that covers the standard aligator type clips. Dont think its rated for that much heat I guess. Insulation on that side of the bridge didnt melt. Though everything was fairly warm to the touch.

 

[Fiddy]

I rewound my primary with silicon insulation 12AWG wire, its blue!

On a tunning note, im in the process of tunning my Microbrute now i have a scope and signal generator.

The secondary is resonating at 410kHz and the primary was ~300khz so i changed the tank cap to a smaller size and got it real close to the secondary resonance, but now i get shorter arcs.

Is this because the tank cap cant charge up as quick at ~400kHz compared to ~300kHz?

and/or

The tank cap being a smaller capacitance doesn't hold as much energy and energy in the capacitor is proportional to spark length?

Some expertise on this would be grand, im looking at you Sigurthr!